Googleplex

A few good articles on Google: Simpson Garfinkel has an article in Technology Review comparing Google and Akamai. He contrasts Google’s secrecy about their technology with Akamai’s relative openness. But he acknowledges that they’re in different businesses:

Both companies have developed infrastructure for running massively parallel systems, but the applications that they are running on top of those systems are different. Google’s primary application is a search engine. Akamai, by contrast, has developed a system for delivering Web pages, streaming media, and a variety of other standard Internet protocols.

Google deals directly with end users whereas Akamai provides infrastructure for other companies. But Google is taking search technology into other areas. Here’s a very interesting interview with Google co-founder Sergey Brin on the future of Gmail. Also read Topix.net’s blog entry on The Secret Source of Google’s Power